RENO, Nev.—Financial adviser and Iraq War combat veteran Dave Flippo appears to have defeated longtime state lawmaker James Settelmeyer in their deep-red Congressional District 2 (CD 2) Republican primary and will enter the general election as a heavy November favorite in a Nevada district that has never sent a Democrat to Washington.
Flippo, riding President Donald Trump’s May 29 endorsement, was leading the 13-candidate GOP pack by more than 7,500 votes—by 10.4 percentage points—with 83 percent of the tally counted at 1 a.m. PDT, and the Nevada secretary of state is unlikely to update those numbers until morning.
At that point, he’d garnered more than 33,000 votes, or 45.7 percent of ballots cast, with Settelmeyer netting just under 25,500 votes, or 35.3 percent, in their June 9 CD 2 primary to succeed the retiring eight-term Rep. Mark Amodei, Nevada’s lone congressional Republican….